Abstract

Although history standards generally aim at developing historical consciousness among secondary school students, there is not much research-based knowledge to support making connections between the past, the present, and the future in history teaching. This study examines the effects of teaching analogous cases of an enduring human issue in 2 experimental conditions: 1 in which grade 10-12 students (n = 460) were actively encouraged to compare cases and to draw analogies with the present and 1 in which students studied cases without making comparisons or drawing analogies with the present (n = 273). Set against the results of a group of students who followed the usual history curriculum (n = 289), multilevel regression analyses on the collected data revealed that both experimental conditions positively affected students’ appraisals of the relevance of history, more so in the case-comparison condition than in the separate-case condition. Students in the case-comparison condition also deemed the lesson course more valuable and experienced less difficulty with the applied pedagogical approach than students in the separate-case condition. Case comparison did not negatively affect the acquisition of historical factual knowledge. Implications for further research are discussed.

摘要

尽管历史标准通常旨在培养中学生的历史意识，但是在历史教学中，没有太多基于研究的知识来支持在过去，现在和未来之间建立联系。这项研究考察了在2种实验条件下教授人类持续存在的类似案例的效果：1 积极鼓励10-12年级的学生（n = 460）比较案例并与现在进行类比； 1则其中的学生研究案例，而没有与之进行比较或绘制类比（n  = 273）。与一群遵循常规历史课程（n = 289），对收集到的数据进行的多级回归分析显示，两种实验条件都对学生对历史相关性的评估产生了积极影响，在案例比较条件下比在单独案例条件下更是如此。案例比较情况下的学生也认为本课程比单独案例情况下的学生更有价值，并且采用教学法的难度也较小。案例比较对历史事实知识的获取没有负面影响。讨论了进一步研究的意义。